FAR Part 15

Two proposals rated Exceptional. Two past performance ratings of Substantial Confidence. A price gap of nearly $15 million between the two offerors. On that record, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) did what source selection authorities routinely do. It declared the offerors essentially equal on the non-price factors and awarded to the lower-priced firm. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained the disappointed offeror’s protest, because the past performance findings that made the two firms look equivalent could not bear the weight the agency placed on them. The case is Veros Real Estate Solutions, LLC, B-423965.2, B-423965.3, B-423965.4 (Comp. Gen. July 22, 2026), and it carries an outsize practical lesson: An agency may not credit an offeror with work the offeror did not perform, and it may not paper over a relevancy determination with conclusory adjectives. For contractors competing in best value procurements where technical ratings bunch at the top, the holding warrants close study.

Continue Reading Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due: GAO Sustains Protest Where VA Credited the Awardee for the Government’s Own Work

Virtually every year, the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO’s) Bid Protest Annual Report includes “flawed technical evaluations” as one of the top five most common grounds for successful protests. Simply stated, this means that if a protest is to be sustained at the GAO, there is a good chance the Government watchdog will find that the agency failed to evaluate the protester’s and/or awardee’s technical proposal in accordance with the solicitation’s disclosed evaluation methodology. It follows, of course, that more complex evaluation schemes (i.e., those with a multiplicity of factors, sub-factors, and weighting systems) carry a commensurately higher level of risk that agency evaluators will get it wrong. The GAO’s recent decision in AT&T Mobility, LLC provides one such example and is a useful case study for contractors.
Continue Reading The Devil Is in the Details: Recent GAO Decision Underscores the Importance of Checking the Agency’s Math